Teaching
This chapter listed the selected projects that was realized by students of my mentorship most of them are focused on social related subjects.
Ting GAO
2023
Behold the tale amidst the sombre expanse of Beijing, where a spirited young woman forged her artistic narrative, weaving threads of feminism while vehemently rebuking the stifling chokehold on freedom of expression. Her path diverged from the perilous cynicism of activism, a defiant stance that reverberated with risk, yet pulsated with unyielding purpose.
Within Ting's creations resides a seismic challenge to the traditional yet morally contorted framework of Confucian-rooted patriarchy entrenched in Chinese society. Her brushstrokes dance upon the canvas of daily life, teasing out elements that unravel the authoritarian tapestry, casting an eerie and profound filter upon societal artefacts. In response to the white paper movement taking place during the unforgiving winter of 2022, her art became a linchpin, catalysing a resurgence of civil dissent, echoing the resonant spirit of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Her oeuvre, a profound exploration of the human condition, unfolds as she delves deeper into the corridors of artistry at the esteemed Royal College of Art in London.
Xiaoyang YI
2022
Being a young Chinese sports talent, Xiaoyang simultaneously finds his passion both in alpine skiing and image making. He's spent most of his training and studying time in Switzerland, and he also was a member of the Chinese National Skiing Team - until the brink of the opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The fruitful experiences in being active in 2 different systems dispensed him energetic views towards the social justice theme. He was inspired by the experience in taking engagement towards China's zero-covid regime and developed these inspirations into a short film. The film was awarded or nominated by film festivals including Los Angeles Film Awards 2022, Student World Awards 2022, Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards 2022 and Berlin Indie Film Festival 2023. Xiaoyang also collaborated with a Ukrainian actor in this film project and the production of this film also offered contributions for the local Ukrainian community in the city of Beijing.
Rongyuan HU
2021
Rongyuan is a young artist who graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, his work mainly concerns the relationship between individuals and public spaces of the totalitarian society, specific in big cities of China. During our collaborative mentorship of his portfolio build, he focused his art practice on performance pieces that challenge both the definition of the medium and the edge of not being caught by any policing power by doing art in public.
Jack Bowen XIAO
2021
Jack is a young man currently attending a boarding school at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT. This project is produced during his Covid-19 break in 2021 as he returned to his home town. This is an education project with the outcome of a series of short documentary films, in which we point our lens toward the young man himself - a guy who's so confused about all the differences happening around him that are led by a completely different value system compared to the U.S. society.
Follow this link to watch this documentary film series:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL79N3H5Fd-pzaQtPEn4ZrrLYvccn0Fxw0
Zitong SHU
2021
Zitong, a passionate yet humble filmmaker who has a background of environmental design has sharp viewpoints on the life of the general young people who live in this fast-developing country where the violence of the human rights and labour rights are ignored as the part of the cost of the "Chinese Dream".
(Please should click the image to watch the short films accordingly)
Zining is a young feminist artist, the mentorship between her and me was during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our meetings and tutorials all happened online and the videos and performance pieces all developed during the lockdown times of the cities in China. Her works during that time carried a sense of complicated fragility of the young female's social status in that special time as well as the subliminal critiques on what women endure in the society as a whole. Zining was then enrolled by the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford University in 2021.
Meng is one of the earliest student I've collaborate with a mentorship. His hometown is Wuhan, he also had his undergraduate study there. His portfolio displayed a series of work about the approach of the deconstruction of the family affections as well as the scars left to his family from the cultural revolution. Meng's works are the first to left me the impression of the city of Wuhan as a place of tragedy long before the outbreak of the covid-19... Meng has later been enrolled by Glasgow School of Art for his further study in MA program.
Nathan Hao YANG
2016
Nathan's works deliver a broad range of diversity in engaging various mediums. But one of the unique works that I mentored him on was a short film documenting his experience of studying Japan. This work was now a precious archive of the young Chinese student's thoughts when China had just begun its free-fall into a typical totalitarian country. Nathan is one of the earliest students of my career as an art educator and he's now a PhD candidate at Lancaster University, UK.
